Instructional Program

Providing a foundation for the iSchool's instructional model are several underlying ideas:

Innovation: the need to constantly ask "why?" and "what if?" to avoid the common pitfall of recreating the status quo;

Individualization and Personalization: the focus on meeting the needs of each and every student; and

Metacognitive Skill Development: the understanding that high school could no longer be about learning a defined set of concepts - that high school for the 21st century needed to emphasize the learning process and thinking skills.

In service of its core values of innovation, individualization and personalization, and metacognitive skill development, and with the reality of the system and the unique needs of adolescents in mind, the leaders developed a four-prong model:

1. Challenge-based modules

2. Online learning

3. Advisory

4. Core Experiences

Supporting these four instructional approaches are three important systems: student scheduling, individual student mastery tracking, and the school's Area of Focus program. In its entirety, this model allows the school to meet system and accountability requirements, to support students' developmental needs, to prepare students to get into and be successful in college, as well as to provide them with an important foundation for career achievement.

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